If you thought coming back from the dead only happened in fiction, think again. On September 17, 2011, the family of Taylor Hale had to say their goodbyes. Though she was young and had her whole life ahead of her, doctors told her family that she would never recover after she went brain-dead.

Hale’s family was petrified after they realized how much things had changed for the then fourteen-year-old girl. Not long ago, Hale was your everyday high schooler with aspirations of graduating and traveling the world.

On that day, Hale’s life forever changed. What should have been an innocuous moment led to a series of events that resulted in her parents making the agonizing decision to end their daughter’s life.

Hale joined her friends in September to celebrate Waukee High School’s first football game that year. It was a big occasion for the students, and no one wanted to leave. But when it became time for everyone to go home, Hale and a friend asked the person teasingly why they were in such a hurry to leave. Hale and her friend attempt to keep the boy around by sitting on his car, but he doesn’t care and drives away.

The other girl gracefully fell to the ground. Hale, however, was drug until her head hit the pavement which resulted in severe injuries. Her head hit the ground so hard that her friends thought she was joking and laughed. When she didn’t move, they realized it was serious. That’s when a friend called 911 and then Hale’s mother, Stacy Henningsen.

“There’s been an accident,” Stacy recalled. “An ambulance is on the way.”

When Hale arrived at the hospital, doctors were pessimistic about her survival rate and feared it may have been too late. They realized that she had suffered a brain hemorrhage and her brain was bleeding by the early morning hours of September 17. The week prior she hadn’t shown any response, and upon learning her brain was hemorrhaging, doctors were sure of a negative outcome.

The doctors were worried when they saw the brain sink into the spinal canal as it could mean that the teenager’s brain was no longer oxygenating and would eventually die.

“No one comes back from that,” the doctors told her parents.

The doctors said the teen’s brain had “turned to mush” and that she was brain dead, meaning there would be no more improvement. They recommended her parents take her off life support.

Hale’s news traveled quickly throughout the town, and a family friend named Dr. Jeff Strickel came to visit him in the hospital. While he was there, Dr. Strickel called on God for help – and God answered his prayers.

Hale woke up and recovered. She graduated high school in 2015.